


swallowing my soul

by baudlairean



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Fanmix, Gen, capitalist pigdogs, elliot's imaginary friend, first-person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:01:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4723523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baudlairean/pseuds/baudlairean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>g:/readme.txt/here is the news i’ve been waiting for. it comes on a clean piece of paper, and the print is definitive. it tells me what to worry about. it describes a treatment plan. it envisions a world of normalcy and cloud-naming, devoted subservience to the cool whispering machinery that identifies brains in a system of records based on their malfunctions. you have been quarantined. del corrupted file y/n?</p>
            </blockquote>





	swallowing my soul

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is intended to accompany a [mix](http://8tracks.com/baudlairean/swallowing-my-soul-mr-robot). Consider this voice practice, and stretching my legs a little with the fandom.

1\. 

g:/readme.txt/here is the news i’ve been waiting for. it comes on a clean piece of paper, and the print is definitive. it tells me what to worry about. it describes a treatment plan. it envisions a world of normalcy and cloud-naming, devoted subservience to the cool whispering machinery that identifies brains in a system of records based on their malfunctions. you have been quarantined. del corrupted file y/n?

2\. 

the trick with creating someone to talk to is they can’t call you on your shit. you’re never going to tell me what i’m doing wrong, not that i need the help. but the tumult, the chaos, the fractals, you’re the only one who knows them. i have a tendency to manipulate my surroundings for maximum comfort and ease and minimum of interaction, so we only talk when i want to, and i owe you nothing, nothing, i owe you.

3.

coming to terms with irrelevance is a difficult prospect. you find small ways to fight it, ineffectual as they are. you sneak into movies and feel rebellious. you sell drugs in the shadow of a corporate office building. you lick and plant your stamps upside down. you shortchange the clerk at the convenience store. you commit the small acts of irony and cruelty you can get away with, but every comfortable hipster in red hook still has a lease, still buys their drugs from a long chain leashed to the cartels, just a company by another name, still soothes themselves with artisinal cocktails and mystery novels read in rooftop bookclubs and savors their own supremacy in the little clubs no one knows about. here’s the question - does being hooked on molly make you an all-star? you know your dad liked bad music, and that it feels good to spit in an asshole’s drink, but what mark are you making by buying fair trade coffee from your iphone? what are you saying? 

4.

when he grates on you like a rodent is scrabbling at your face. when she’s disappointed you don’t like him more. when someone asks you for the time. when you imagine yourself in a quiet concrete pool underground, deep below the cool blue water, removed by a thousand miles, as he tells you about this new band he just exchanged tweets with for a remote thrill of non-engagement. scratching, tiny claws in your eyeballs, when she wraps her fingers through his like a lover, and you imagine how they are together when they’re alone, and you light with shame.

5.

this is private. fingertips on glass, forehead pressed against, looking in on blonde hair and thin mouth. sliding along the invisible barrier, treating it as if it couldn’t possibly be broken, not for anything, not even in case of emergency. safer here, glass keeps out the rain and the riff raff from the nice world. you can come as close as the barrier, but any closer? any closer would require coming out from under. it would require more than haunting.

6.

arcade games and shitty movie theater popcorn. you’re a hypocrite - your hosanna sings the same song as everyone else’s, he just does it in a minor key. he sings this song - stupid americans, ignorant americans, sheeple that need a wakeup call. he knows your weak spots, and he exploits them, and you let him. he is not the daemon on your shoulder. you have too many already, there’s no room for him to find a perch. but he thinks he has his hooks in you, and he’s right. this is catch and release. he’s a purity of philosophy, of the sloth-slow-slide of everyone low on the ladder down a rung, too busy watching a superhero movie to notice they’ve lost their grip. but you could kick him any time you wanted to.

7.

you have a fantasy about escaping evil. you take the people who matter. you go somewhere far from here, where they don’t have running water. you sink into the sand and forget everything you’ve ever cared about. you don’t succumb, but you do opt for a backdoor exit, leave a cloned system running back in new york to take your phone calls for a few weeks and shed the skin of society like a coat of scales. of course, it’s a fantasy. being a fantasy, you don’t go alone. there is no Evil in the place you run to, and that’s what makes it paradise. you don’t fight the good fight, but you do let the current carry you out of reach of the battlefield. maybe you weren’t born to be a warrior. maybe there is somewhere else to live.

8.

or maybe you drop out the other way. maybe you open your mouth and let the honey pour in. who am i fucking fooling? it already happened. curled up numb on the couch with an empty mortar. what makes me better? leaving the tv off when i drop out?

9.

it doesn't have to be all bad. good people are in that world. like the girl who came to new york looking for something, heard a groove she liked and danced to it, kicked it when it stopped suiting. the kind of person people like, who got her obviously fake last name from a sixties band. got under your skin before you noticed, and she carried a forty year old mainstream beat, the drug dealer who makes good, the heart of gold girl. what's left of her is: a fish, a dirty trunk, an elegy that comes on the radio sometimes when you're standing in a bodega and i remember her dancing, deep in her own self, with a skin so comfortable and something nobody could ever kill.

10\. 

i don’t like being in times square. i don’t even like watching movies. the stultifying qualities of this world don’t end in perfectly trash food created in a lab to appear to humanity’s basest desires for salty-sweet-savory, they extend in every direction. spliced into one another, all the songs and disney movies, all the 4 seconds of skippable youtube ads, all the fragments of lost music pouring from malls, they sing the same sweet song. they can be made to harmonize so easily, a hundred open mouths of forget forget forget forget

11.

sometimes i like to smile while i talk and say the same words inside my head at the correct volume. no thank you. yes i took the pills. what would i have to be angry about? i'm calm.

12.

everyone wants to hear the right thing, not the true thing. they want a happy ending. they want the couple to make up. they want true love. they want you to be filling the right scripts. they want you clean. they want you loving. they want you to not hurt, like they do. they want you to not be alone, like they are. they want you to not be an inverse comma between the bed and the dresser, making wet imprints on your jeans, clenching teeth like that controls your tear ducts. they want the anxious panic to not sweep over you and strangle you, leading your thoughts in circles for hours. stupid. they want you to be nice, and stupid - happy. they want you to be happy, like they aren't. 

13.

it's always easier to crush the pills and drown it out. all those words about people jumping down their own rabbit holes. when your skin's this raw, you'll agree, it's better not to feel anything. you can't be afraid of what you’ve forgotten.

14.

this is me coming detached. this is you and me on the train. this is the gap where i want to press the button and forget it all again. this is where the glitch comes in. this is where it announces itself. this is where i know i'm the one. i wasn't ever keeping them safe. i wasn't fooling anyone. they always knew how close i was to ejecting.

15.

here he is. ugly truth. you made the man you wished existed. you built the psychopath with an axe to grind. the man who fought. the man who never gave up quietly. the one without secrets. an alternate universe dead man who lived and never stopped itching for revenge. but that was never in him - no, that was always you. Me. that was always Me.

16.

maybe the strangest thing is that you built something. not that i was something i wasn't, but that we created something social, something whole, something like minded. i had already killed the loneliness. i just had to get lonelier to do it.

17.

we turn on the arcade lights. they flicker like dim bulbs. darlene says, this is the place. private, quiet, off the grid. you hear whirligigs and pinball. you hear the humming terminals. you see the gold, blue, and red bulbs pinging in long streaks, triggering over and over again in patterns. you say good. you can build an idea here. you can step behind the curtain and get the show going. you can be who someone else was always meant to be. live a legacy, escape loneliness, be yourself. fuck society.


End file.
